B&W traditional photography critique

There all very nice!

The first one is the best in my opinion. The second is a bit confusing - all the dark foliage, you can't really tell what is going on. If you're up to it, you could reduce the enlarger time on the whole thing, then burn in the castle thing for a bit.

The clown one is kind of just a snapshot rather than a photograph, if you know what I mean. The hands are blurry, the contrast is a bit low.

The waterfall one looks pretty well done technically (maybe dodge the white water a bit), but I would try to compose differently in the future, I think that shot could have been better with more context, i.e. not as zoomed in.

The walkway one - is this cropped at all, or straight how it is in the negative? Because this has the potential to be really cool, but the watchtower being slightly cut off the edge takes away from it. Also, I don't know how comfortable with your enlarging and stuff, but you can correct the perspective issues you have from taking the picture looking upwards. You can tilt the easel your paper is on so that the converging lines become parallel. After you've done that, tilt your negative holder about half the angle you tilted the paper to correct the focus. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense.

Bridge & People - I like it...Very photojournalism style.

first one- good composition, sadly, very over photographed subject
its appeared in many pictures and so it kind of loses its intrigue, at least for me

frontenac- too much foliage, eyes get led into a wall of trees

stairs- alright, but nothing pops out about it

waterfall- best of the set, very good, possibly crop slightly along bottom and adjust levels, darken to enhance mood

bridge, pretty good, but not amazing

clown- subjects look slightly awkward, it looks semi candid
it wasnt done completely unannounced, but they didnt have time to get a good pose either, you know?
also hand blur rules this one out imo

thanks! very useful. I'll think about the compositions a bit more next time....

there sick
i like the first one the most

I like them alot.
reminded me how nice Quebec is. I haven't been back in a few years.
i noticed that the sky on the frontenac shot was too bright, and the edge of the roof got a little washed out.
great pics though.

darken them, or play with curves.

or generally pump up the contrast. they look good. :D

Are you working with filters?

I want deeper blacks out of all of them and stronger whites out of most, save for the waterfall where freezed is right about dodging out the white-water, it'd reallly be nice to get some detail there.

nope, no filters

That's too bad. I think your first one is printed the best, you have really nice tones. If you could get your hands on some filters it would help so much. But otherwise, just mess with your timing and definitely do some burning.